Kick-start 2004 with a new marketing approach

(Part 1 in a two-part series.)

It's January, so now is the time to kick-start your marketing communication.

You're back from holiday, rested and enthusiastic for the year ahead, and so are the people in the businesses your business sells to.

So what's the best way to achieve lots of sales? Your enthusiasm may lead you to put your offering directly to as many potential customers as possible.

This can lead to pitches such as "Do we have the answer for you . . ." or "We have a solution which will . . ."

But is this the most effective way to interest potential customers in your product or service?

How often have you been on the receiving end of such an approach?

Did it work on you? Or did you feel your resistance mounting when you realised they were more interested in a sale than in your needs?

Did you feel the conversation was starting in the middle, with a solution, when what you wanted first was to get to grips with a problem?

That's how potential customers feel when you try pushing your product or service directly.

Remember the old sales and marketing acronym AIDA, which stands for Attention, Interest, Desire and Action?

The reasoning behind it is that the process happens in that order — demand (desire) and sales (action) follow the creation of interest. Ahead of that, you have to get attention.

Many people make the mistake of trying to get attention for their product or service. That approach puts the focus on you.

There is an easier and more reliable method of gaining attention and creating interest: Put the focus on the potential customer. More to the point, put the focus on the customer's problems and concerns.

Talking about the customer's problem is guaranteed to get attention.
Communication which discusses customer problems and issues, provides information which the customer will find useful and valuable, is the key.

You then need a system to turn that attention into interest, to positively qualify prospects, and to set up an on-going dialogue which leads naturally into the sales process.

This is the way marketing communication works best, providing a funnel to your sales team, easing their low-yield workload identifying and prospecting for leads, and allowing them to concentrate their time in high-yield areas like presenting to qualified prospects and closing sales.

Sales people normally spend most of their time prospecting, less on qualifying, less still on presenting, and least of all on closing. Yet their skills and value are in inverse proportions.

A sales team typically spends at least 80 per cent of the time prospecting and qualifying, and less than 20 per cent presenting and closing. If those proportions were reversed, the number of sales would increase at least four-fold.

To work effectively, this approach requires a change of mindset. Instead of your business, your product, or your service, the focus needs to be on the potential customer, their problems and their concerns.

(Go to Part 2)